Opinion: Blizzard heavily controls Diablo 3 legendary/set drops

Eventhough you have the word Opinion in your title, it sounds like your are stating this as facts. Its good logic you have behind these "facts", but you just don't have any proof. It is still RNG, there's no way of proving otherwise, unless you hack into Blizz RNG server/program/code or whatever and get the actual drop rate changes over the past 6 months of all the items.

I've had a many different kind of streaks over the 450-500 hours of play. I've had 2 legendaries drop in one Act 3 warden run; I've got no legendaries over a whole weekend of play; I've gotten no Monk set/legendaries items while playing the monk yet I've found 3 IK set pieces in almost succession with my barb; I've got the 2 Shenlong monk set pieces with my barb; I've never found a Mempo helmet; I've done 8 Act 1 warden runs on MP5 before finally getting the key (Not items, but still RNG); I've gotten all 3 keys successively doing warden runs from Act1-3 etc.

My experience of the RNG is that it's just RNG. Just because someone had a bad luck streak for 300hours of farming, doesn't mean Blizz is controlling the drop rates.

I've noticed you almost never find an item that can be used by your class. I have had a bunch of awesome stuff drop and its never something for my monk. Which makes sense. If you find something good, but never for your class, you get directed traffic to the AH.

Just RNG. As stated above, I've gotten 3 IK set pieces in almost succession and 2 Shenlong set pieces while I played with my barb alone (which has less hours than my monk). I guess I just never had that long a bad luck streak to think otherwise :Thumbs Up:

Good points by all. I didn't expect any less from those that believe in true randomization nor from those who are more inclined to believe there is more to it than that.

But I challenge you to do the following:

1. Keep track of your next 50 to 100 or so legendary drops. Without regard to whether or not the actual 'rolls' were decent, pay attention to how that particular item sells on the AH. If you were to graph them in order of frequency (and I have) you would see that things such as Tormentor, Promise of Glory, Ivory Tower and the like occupy a disproportionately large percentage compared to say, Skorn, Manticore, Witching Hour.

2. Log off for a day (over 24 hours) on 3 separate occassions and pay attention to the number of legendaries you loot in the first 1-2 hours of game play. Now extrapolate that number over the number of hours you have (approximately) played on Inferno difficulty. This simple test will show you the large relative frequency of set/legendary over those first few runs when you log back on.

3. Since there isn't an easy way to do the RMAH test, just ask anyone who has over say, 1000+ hours of game play and frequently makes sales on the RMAH. Really scrutinize them about their answers to how many legendary drops they are afforded compared to someone who only uses the gold AH.

This is exactly your problem - you don't even understand the way ppl understand RNG in Diablo. Its not true randomization. It's pseudorandomization.

1.You simply fail to understand this very basic thing. ilvl 63 has a way lower chance to drop than any other ilvl. All the good ones you mention are 63. All the bad ones are 61 or lower. There's very few legendaries lower than 63 that can be awesome (62 for jewelry) and there are many 63s that are garbage as well.
Additionally, you need to notice how many legendaries there are per slot, how many different types of items exist per slot and take into account that class specific items had their drop chance increased in 1.0.5 + the MP you farm with max speed.

2. I've experienced opposite results.

3. I've played about 1200 hours now and use RMAH to sell only, since day 1 of it's release. I've never found a legendary worth more than 25 eur. All of my big sales were rares.

Also, there's real proof to my claims, except #2.

edit: If you have graphed the frequency of your drops, go check their ilvls and compare them to the official %chance of ilvl drops, while also accounting for amount of legendaries per ilvl compared to rares. surprise!

1. Keep track of your next 50 to 100 or so legendary drops. Without regard to whether or not the actual 'rolls' were decent, pay attention to how that particular item sells on the AH. If you were to graph them in order of frequency (and I have) you would see that things such as Tormentor, Promise of Glory, Ivory Tower and the like occupy a disproportionately large percentage compared to say, Skorn, Manticore, Witching Hour.

I've had many many Ivory Towers, but I have yet to see a Promise of Glory or a Tormentor. On the expensive side, so far I've had one Skorn drop and no witching hour, but several Manticores and Echoing Furys. If I follow your logic, Promise of Glory should be among the most valuable items on the AH.

2. Log off for a day (over 24 hours) on 3 separate occassions and pay attention to the number of legendaries you loot in the first 1-2 hours of game play. Now extrapolate that number over the number of hours you have (approximately) played on Inferno difficulty. This simple test will show you the large relative frequency of set/legendary over those first few runs when you log back on.

Done that. I've had several occasions where I took a few days break and then just planned to play "until at least one legendary drops", just to log of again empty handed.

I don't use the RMAH, and I don't have 1000+ hours, so I can't comment on that.

@Turtel
It is randomized, not pseudo-randomized. Pseudo-randomization would lead to a more even spread of drops, i.e. it would work towards having each item drop once for a player instead of having multiple drops of one item and non of some other items.

and this is why religion should be banned.. it promotes the general acceptance of ignorance of reality.

You people claiming that because money is involved so things are controlled, or that sense RMAH is there of course they control the loot drops, and the dozen other excuses you toss out for why things are how they are, you need to just stop.

Go back to a school, take a basic class on probability, hell just a basic math class teaching % chances... maybe then you will understand that killing more does not equal increased chance...

every single mob has the exact same fixed % chance to drop an item... killing 1 or killing 5000 does not change that per creature, the probability of getting an item increases based upon the number of kills but that does not lock in an item, since according to probability a diamond will instantly move 5 feet given enough time.

So please, stop shouting "its blizzards fault i get crappy loot" just cause you are too ignorant to understand the truth of the matter.

What are the odds of flipping a coin (50%) and hitting heads 7 times in a row...

Not that small at all, actually. Seriously - go ahead and grab a coin. Film it too; I will bet you 100,000,000 gold that if you flip a coin every 5 seconds for an hour - just one hour - before the hour ends (and possibly even way before) you WILL get a streak of 7 at least once (possibly multiple times, maybe even a higher streak).

You have the whole coin flip thing wrong. It's also ironic that you mention the coin flip, as it actually supports the opposing argument and not yours. I will explain. I have become an expert at this after having killed Baron Riverndare approximately 2,870,124,552 times.

In statistics, the coin flip example is used when explaining to someone their personal chances of triggering a random event by chance. In shorter, simpler, more Diablo oriented words: Your chance of triggering an x% drop.

The most important thing to understand this is to have a clear realization from the beginning that we are talking about two different chances, and not one. The first is naturally the drop chance (let's use 1% as an example), and the second chance is your personal odds of triggering the first. The drop chance will never change and will continue to be 1% forever. Your personal chances of triggering a 1% chance does change though. It starts small alongside the original drop chance, but with every attempt, your chances of successfully triggering a 1% drop grows. People who argue that your chance is the same every time don't have a good understanding of the difference between the drop rate and your chances of triggering a drop rate.

Here's where the coin example comes in. You say what is the chance of getting heads or tails on a coin flip? 50%. Can you flip a coin forever and only get heads? Technically... yes. Practically though, this is as near to impossible as you can get. This is because your chance of not getting the other side decreases with every flip.

Another example is if you set up a deck of cards every morning face down and attempt to draw the ace of spades. You only get one draw a day and shuffle every day. Odds here are 1/52, so you probably will not draw the correct card early on; however the more you continue to do this, the less probably it becomes for you not to draw the card. One day will come when you WILL draw the ace of spades, and so on withe everything else.

The smaller the original drop chance, the more attempts it requires. Yes people can get lucky or unlucky sometimes, but the old term "keep trying, you will find it!" also holds true.